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Marketing has become a unique challenge in today’s environment no matter who you are, what you are selling, or who you are selling to. This is true for many reasons ranging from the need to push past traditional means of segmentation to develop a deeper understanding of your customers, to finding ways of moving beyond personalization to deliver commercial intimacy at scale. Tackling these new market realities involves embracing the best of creativity, technology and science to do so, all with an eye toward transforming data into brand intelligence that identifies ways for marketers to move beyond their role of brand steward to one of customer advocate. These challenges can be found at the world’s leading brands but can perhaps be even more acutely felt inside the most disruptive organizations; those that are boldly challenging traditional market incumbents.

Tekedra Mawakana: Push Them Past Complacency, Have Humility + Make Them One With The Brand’s Journey

Billee Howard

With that in mind, I thought it would be important to speak to a communications leader spearheading brand development and market adoption for a new category innovator. For my most recent column, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tekedra Mawakana, Chief External Officer at Waymo, the market leader in autonomous vehicles. Tekedra is an industry veteran with years of experience at leading brands such as eBay and Yahoo. Following is a recap of our conversation:

Billee Howard: Why don't we start with this whole notion of brands needing to find the right mix of not just creativity and technology, but also science, in not only building brands today, but doing so in ways that advocate for the customer. What are your thoughts?

Tekedra Mawakana: The right mix of creativity, technology and science really depends on your category. What are you selling? How familiar are consumers with the category? How mature are you as a leader, or are you challenging the leading brand? For Waymo, we're at the very beginning of our journey bringing to market a nascent technology. Not only is self-driving technology a brand new category, but most people who will hear about the technology either from us at Waymo, or industry wide, won't have yet actually ever interacted with it directly.

We’re introducing this from a place of empathy first and foremost. We believe that our service will make a difference in the lives of people, but we recognize we have to make people feel welcome into this conversation and not allow the technology to feel too intimidating. Our task is to educate how our technology will help make the streets safer and provide greater access to transportation options for communities.

A dialogue about Waymo has to start with helping people realize the risks inherent in human driving today, and show them that a better way is possible. We then back this up with experience - we’ve been working on this technology for ten years already - we were the first to study and tackle this problem because our founders believe that technology can make the world a radically better place. In telling the story of how building the world's most experienced driver really works, we’ve used an approach informed by both empathy and insights.

In practice, for us, this has meant keeping an open mind as we introduce our technology to riders and new communities, empowering them to learn about and ultimately experience self-driving directly as early adopters, and then share their candid stories with us. This step-by-step process of inviting people in, listening to them, and thoughtfully applying those learnings has been effective for us in building trust. What has been really effective for us is letting our riders, as early adopters, experience the technology in meaningful ways and then speaking for themselves.

Howard: Got it. Super cool. So, now going back to the whole idea that you have such a varied target audience that most likely has polar opposite views, both from the standpoint of rational and emotional engagement. What strategies are you using to address this complexity?

Mawakana: People have varying levels of trust when it comes to self-driving technology. We have found that introducing people to the tech -- either directly in a vehicle, or indirectly through a 360 VR headset -- helps convert even a skeptic to a fan. Why? Because, in spite of all the anticipation, riding in a Waymo vehicle is a predictable experience. There is this huge gap between what is imagined and what actually happens in one of our self-driving cars. Our riders tell us they find the experience safe, clean and comfortable.

Howard: What you just mentioned has a lot to do with finding ways of elevating trust, which is something that I think has always been important, but has become heightened as of late, for a multitude of reasons. I think that that's a good bridge to marketers needing to go from being stewards of the brand to advocates for the consumer to build trust. I'd love your thoughts on that idea in general, but more importantly, why it's perhaps acutely relevant in a new industry like yours?

Mawakana: I think that's a really good point. How do you shape the brand as a two way conversation? That's how we've approached it at Waymo and I think it’s critical for any brand today. Bringing this kind of technology to the market for the first time requires a level of humility that indicates we’re still learning, and honesty goes a long way with consumers.

We don't yet know all of the transportation or accessibility pain points people have. Transportation systems have been largely designed around city centers, leading to the challenge of urban and suburban access and different needs across communities. However, by connecting directly with communities and sharing our opportunity to re-conceptualize transportation safety, access and mobility for all, we create a two-way conversation and that to us, in these early days, is one of the ways to do it right.

Our approach is to convene, listen to the customer and advocate for their needs. When we first launched our early rider program in Metro Phoenix almost three years ago, we invited members of the public to experience the technology for everyday uses like soccer practice, commuting to work, and picking a child up from school. We did it so we could get genuine feedback and work together to make our riders’ lives safer and easier.

Howard: That is a great answer because obviously it's a totally different approach to the worn path, of let's call it, “consumer driven innovation,” which was very static, whereas you're taking a dynamic approach and advocating for the customer directly, which is obviously so vital in building trust. That said, I'd like take a step back for a second. You guys started as the Google self-driving car project and you then came up with the Waymo brand. Can you give me some sense of how that took place?

Mawakana: We started as part of the Google moonshot factory and one of the opportunities of being a moonshot is to take a huge problem facing society and answer this question: Can technology be used in a radical way to address the issue? Our moonshot opportunity at Waymo is linked to road safety.

In December of 2016, we were slated to graduate from the moonshot factory and we decided it was important to create this break brand-wise because Alphabet had been formed by then. We sat down and said: “What is a word that captures this new way forward in the future of mobility, micro mobility, etc.? That's how the word Waymo came to be. We considered a lot of technical names, because as a technology company it is almost expected that we have a technical name. We really felt like capturing the passion for mobility opportunities, as well as injecting delight into our brand experience was most important, so we created this word Waymo and it stands for a new way forward in mobility. We really just figured out our north star and went for it. I truly believe that that type of human insight is as important as having an ability to leverage all the data and technology.

Howard: I agree completely and that makes a lot of sense, particularly, as I believe many brands have over- corrected to be too algorithmic at the sacrifice of humanity. What is your strategy for distinguishing yourself from the other autonomous vehicle companies that are out there?

Mawakana: I think a big part of how we distinguish ourselves is tied to our origin as a moonshot company. There are no companies in this space that were founded in 2009, or that were founded with the mission to answer a really big question: “If technology could be used to make the roads safer, what could that look like?”

Around 2012, we actually arrived at technology that is similar to the driver assist features on some cars today, that allow the car to take over the task of driving on highways, but the human driver needs to be prepared to take back the task of driving at a moment’s notice if needed. We were able to safely take people from point A to point B on highways and we asked them to pay attention if we needed them to take over the vehicle. That was 2012, and what we learned back then is that people became overly dependent on the technology, expecting it to perform beyond its driver assist capabilities. It was at that point that we made the moonshot decision to only focus on fully self-driving technology, which means we never rely on the human to take over, because we realized that driver assist features were insufficient to truly solve this issue of road safety

The reason that's so important as a distinguishing factor between us and other companies is one, it demonstrates our moonshot DNA, and as NHTSA has said, approximately forty thousand people die on our roadways in the U.S. every year, and that over ninety percent of those deaths are caused by human error, our difference is our sole commitment to actually address the problem of human error. That’s more than just being focused on next generation technology, it’s a grander purpose to contribute to society in a way that can really make a difference in people’s lives.

Most companies in this space right now are still in the race towards driver assist technologies which may bear out some safety benefits, but we are reaching for a North Star that is even more challenging, one that we believe is worth the commitment and can benefit society at large.

Howard: Very insightful. I think I'd like to end with your thoughts on the vision for the future, but I'd like to look at it less from a Waymo specific point of view and more from a broad marketing, communications and brand point of view.

Mawakana: I think the vision for the future when we're talking about introducing a new category where people have deeply embedded complacency around the issue we're attempting to solve for, is to help shift that mindset. I think that’s an idea that’s relevant to most brands today, not just ours. Getting people to shift behaviors today is what’s vital. People are comfortable that our roads are safe enough today. People get in their cars every day and they do not perceive themselves as seeking an unreasonable risk when they drive despite knowing that their neighbor or their friend may have been involved in a pedestrian or road fatality.

We have the opportunity to bring this technology and new product and service categories to market. To do so successfully, we have to figure out new ways to disrupt human complacency when it comes to road safety. We’ve got to remind people that there's a better, safer way. We've focused on taking people on the journey with us as we build our brand and define what it means, as we did when we launched our “Every Step Matters” campaign. Historically, brands delivered on the ultimate promise, but they didn't deliver on the journey and they didn't expect people to go on the journey with them. Through our “Every Step Matters” campaign, we've invited people to be a part of this journey and disrupt their own sense of complacency. We’ve asked for peoples’ feedback along the way: Are they willing to go on this journey with us, to trust us, and to ultimately one day choose our brand over another, even if the personal benefit is years away?

Giving consumers the opportunity to experience our growth and development along the way is the vision of the future. I believe for any brand, no matter who you are, or what you’re selling, inviting consumers in, peeling back the curtain, listening to their fears, expectations, and helping them uncover the unmet needs they may not even realize they have, is going to define future success. Leverage behavioral data and stated data. Try, iterate, learn, improve, and bring them along on a collaborative journey. That’s how we’re ushering in a new era of mobility and building consumer trust for cutting-edge technology - by simply being open, honest, thoughtful, and real with our riders and the communities we operate in.

Billee Howard is Founder CEO of BRANDthro, a neuromarketing consultancy focused on creating a new type of consumer insight rooted in emotional intelligence. We believe

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Billee Howard is Founder CEO of BRANDthro, a neuromarketing consultancy focused on creating a new type of consumer insight rooted in emotional intelligence. We believe emotion is a significant driver of behavior - only when a brand moves people to feel, will it move them to act.
Our offering uses proprietary emotion AI and neuroscience to create a richer understanding of a brand, their competitors and the target segment through the lens of personality, emotion and language. Reach me at billee@brandthro.com